Do infants have agency? – The importance of control for the study of early agency

Bednarski, Florian Markus; Musholt, Kristina; Wiesmann, Charlotte Grosse

doi:10.1016/j.dr.2022.101022

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Finally, we discuss how physical agency (Gergely 2002) emerges in early infancy. It has been suggested that experiments with young infants using the MCR paradigm can provide clues to understanding the manifestation of physical agency (Watanabe et al 2011; Sen and Gredebäck 2021; Bednarski et al 2022). Kelso and Fuchs (2016) constructed a dynamical system model including a mechanism of positive feedback, in which a mobile movement that accompanied a movement further enhanced it.…”

Section: Developmental Emergence Of Physical Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamical systems model of development of the action differentiation in early infancy: a requisite of physical agency

Fujihira

Taga²

2023

Biol Cybern

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Young infants are sensitive to whether their body movements cause subsequent events or not during the interaction with the environment. This ability has been revealed by empirical studies on the reinforcement of limb movements when a string is attached between an infant limb and a mobile toy suspended overhead. A previous study reproduced the experimental observation by modeling both the infant’s limb and a mobile toy as a system of coupled oscillators. The authors then argued that emergence of agency could be explained by a phase transition in the dynamical system: from a weakly coupled state to a state where the both movements of the limb and the toy are highly coordinated. However, what remains unexplained is the following experimental observation: When the limb is connected to the mobile toy by a string, the infant increases the average velocity of the arm’s movement. On the other hand, when the toy is controlled externally, the average arm’s velocity is greatly reduced. Since young infants produce exuberant spontaneous movements even with no external stimuli, the inhibition of motor action to suppress the formation of spurious action-perception coupling should be also a crucial sign for the emergence of agency. Thus, we present a dynamical system model for the development of action differentiation, to move or not to move, in the mobile task. In addition to the pair of limb and mobile oscillators for providing positive feedback for reinforcement in the previous model, bifurcation dynamics are incorporated to enhance or inhibit self-movements in response to detecting contingencies between the limb and mobile movements. The results from computer simulations reproduce experimental observations on the developmental emergence of action differentiation between 2 and 3 months of age in the form of a bifurcation diagram. We infer that the emergence of physical agency entails young infants’ ability not only to enhance a specific action-perception coupling, but also to decouple it and create a new mode of action-perception coupling based on the internal state dynamics with contingency detection between self-generated actions and environmental events.

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Section: Developmental Emergence Of Physical Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamical systems model of development of the action differentiation in early infancy: a requisite of physical agency

Fujihira

Taga²

2023

Biol Cybern

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“…Moreover, infants at around 9 months of age are aware of the association between actions and effects, thus responding faster to events that they had previously actively produced than to action-independent events [ 58 ]. Other authors question the appropriateness of these methods for studying the sense of agency in preverbal children, and point out that the mere association between stimulus and response is not sufficient to constitute a minimal sense of agency, which should be distinguished from reinforced learning [ 59 ]. Additional studies have investigated implicit agency in school-aged children, who showed reduced temporal binding than adults [ 60 , 61 ].…”

Section: A Developmental Journeymentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivation from Agency and Reward in Typical Development and Autism: Narrative Review of Behavioral and Neural Evidence

et al. 2022

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Our ability to perform voluntary actions and make choices is shaped by the motivation from having control over the resulting effects (agency) and positive outcomes (reward). We offer an overview of distinct and common behavioral and neural signatures of agency and reward. We discuss their typical and atypical developmental trajectories, focusing on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is characterized by neurodiverse processes underlying action selection. We propose that reduced sensitivity to agency and reward in ASD may be related to atypical multisensory processes and motor planning, with potential for understanding restricted and repetitive behaviors. We emphasize the limitations of the existing literature, and prospects for future research. Understanding the neurocognitive processes that shape the way people with ASD select actions and perceive outcomes is essential to support not only learning, but also volition and self-determination.

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“…2 Please note, we are concerned here with a minimal kind of agency that pertains to the adaptive regulation of bodily (i.e., visceral or somatomotor) states (cf. Bednarski et al, 2022;Virenque & Mossio, 2023). This understanding is more austere than conceptions that relate agency to mental states (e.g., explicit beliefs and desires), and does not imply meta-awareness of one's capacity for agentic control (e.g., sense of agency).…”

Section: The Visceral Afferent Training Hypothesis: a Brief Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Visceral afferent training in action: The origins of agency in early cognitive development

Corcoran¹,

Feuerriegel²,

Robinson³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The foetal period constitutes a critical stage in the construction and organisation of the mammalian nervous system. In recent work, we have proposed that foetal brain development is supported by bottom-up (interoceptive) inputs from spontaneous physiological rhythms such as the heartbeat (Corcoran et al., in press). Here, we expand this visceral afferent training hypothesis to incorporate the development of top-down (allostatic) control over bodily states. We propose that the brain’s capacity to actively modify and regulate the afferent feedback it receives through interoceptive (and other sensory) channels is crucial for establishing basic forms of agentic control and grounding the distinction between self and other. We further suggest that individual differences in the way these training regimes are implemented (or disrupted) might impact developmental trajectories in gestation and infancy, including the potentiation of neurobehavioural impairment and disease risk in later life. This analysis raises the important question of whether the deleterious effects of prenatal adversity (e.g., premature birth) can be mitigated via targeted visceral afferent training interventions.

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Do infants have agency? – The importance of control for the study of early agency

Cited by 8 publications

References 71 publications

Dynamical systems model of development of the action differentiation in early infancy: a requisite of physical agency

Dynamical systems model of development of the action differentiation in early infancy: a requisite of physical agency

Motivation from Agency and Reward in Typical Development and Autism: Narrative Review of Behavioral and Neural Evidence

Visceral afferent training in action: The origins of agency in early cognitive development

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